SAWYER #3
For the next hour, we had our heads together, and Noah doodled on a piece of paper while explaining how dimensions worked.
Something about adding time into a bowl of soup and different planes of reality.
He soon became so engrossed in the likelihood of us living in a simulation and I had no idea how we’d gotten here.
I figured I must have been thinking about something else in the meantime, but I had no memory of what.
Instead, I was staring at the expressive way his lips moved and the confident, heated tone of his voice.
“So when you think about it, it’s almost certain that a technologically advanced civilization would run a simulation.
Need I tell you about The Sims? And if we can agree on that, then we agree on the fact that the simulated reality will also evolve enough to run a simulation of its own.
In theory, this spirals into millions of levels of simulation.
You stack them one on top of the other, deeper and deeper and deeper.
But there’s still only a single reality, the one that started it all.
So, when you think about it, the odds that you and I exist in that single, real reality, could be one in a million.
Or one in a billion. Or however many levels of simulation you can imagine.
And that’s the problem with theory, Sawyer.
” He looked into my eyes with blazing passion.
“When there’s something you can’t prove or disprove, you better stay away from it.
It’s sort of like God. Are you religious? ”
I blinked, way too absorbed in the mossy greenness of his eyes to follow his tangent. “I mean, I have sex with guys as often as I do with girls and it’s all pre-marital, so go figure.”
He snorted. “Right. It would be like a deer worshiping the Church of the Crocodile.”
I liked the way he said it. It made me laugh.
Noah, too, laughed, albeit softly. “I could give you a million arguments that we’re trapped in a simulation, even though it won’t change the fact you need to pass your physics test anyway.
And you can never disprove it. Whatever you say, I’ll have an explanation.
That’s the trouble with the ineffable concepts that explain themselves.
It’s better not to go down that rabbit hole. ”
“Hm, good that we dodged that one,” I said reassuringly.
He picked up on my sarcasm. Progress. “Right, well, I’m just making a larger point that physics explains everything around us. If you know how to listen, you’ll realize that it rhymes.”
Our heads were so close to one another, like two conspirators plotting.
He looked at me and I waited. There were stars in his eyes, glimmering, bursting with energy.
This guy was in love with science. He was so deeply into it that no guy ever stood a chance.
I was doing this whole thing wrong. I was teaching him how to attract a guy.
But what I should have been doing was holding mass lectures on how to get Noah Foster to like you.
He was so much more than what he presented.
All these guys I was about to unleash Noah on had no idea what was coming.
They weren’t ready. There was no way they could ever make him happy.
Hell, I doubted they’d be able to satisfy him.
I licked my lips as my stomach hollowed and tingling filled it. Nervousness I couldn’t explain itched at my fingertips.
He sigh-laughed and pulled away from me, looking at the notebook in front of us.
Though I didn’t have many coherent thoughts in my head and I hardly knew what I wanted to do or if I wanted to do anything at all, the moment Noah pulled away, my chest was filled with frustration and sadness.
I felt like I’d just missed an opportunity to…
do something. My ears rang and my face heated up.
Noah turned the session around and focused on the test materials from my textbook. We had two weeks to cover these or I was doomed. I didn’t regret the time we lost in the heat of his lecture. It was the most fun I had learning anything.
We lived in a simulation, apparently. Even though nothing changed, it made me look at the world a little differently.
Maybe it gave me a small amount of extra courage.
Or a flicker of hope. Maybe something unattainable and unlikely could happen thanks to a glitch in the system.
Maybe that was what we called miracles. Maybe there was a chance for me to…
What? Pass physics, of course. But it suddenly seemed a little less important.
I just didn’t know what I was comparing it to.
When I left Noah’s room later that night, the wild post-game hormones had faded away, and walking on the slippery path between his dormitory and my house felt more like walking on a really thick featherbed.
My heart thumped faster and I felt like some progress was made.
Bit by bit, meeting him three times a week, I would make it. I was sure of that.
The other thing I knew for certain was that I really looked forward to Thursday night.
I’d visit Noah after practice, intruding on his private time, but I had a hard time feeling sorry.
Listening to him was the closest thing to the thrill of skating that I’d ever felt. That had to mean it was worth it.